Hezbollah Wants Brutal Killer In Return For Israeli Soldiers
Ryan R. Jones - All Headline News Middle East Correspondent Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - A senior Hezbollah official on Friday said his group would not even entertain the idea of a prisoner exchange with Israel unless a terrorist responsible for the brutal 1979 murder of an Israeli father and his daughter was included in the swap. Hezbollah has been trying to win the release of Samir Kuntar for decades, and group spokesman Mahmoud Kamati told the Nazareth-based newspaper A-Sinara that the abduction of Israeli reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on July 12 had been carried out primarily to secure the aging killer's freedom. In 1979, Kuntar led a group of Lebanese terrorists across Israel's northern border an into the seaside town of Nahariya. They then entered the home of Danny Haran and took him and his four-year-old daughter down to the nearby beach. There Kuntar and his men bashed the girl's head against the rocks until she died before executing the horrified father with a single shot to the head. Inside the house, Haran's two-year-old daughter was accidentally smothered to death by her mother as the two hid in a closet trying to evade detection by the terrorists. Kuntar also shot dead an Israeli police officer before being captured. Israel has refused to include Kuntar in past prisoner exchanges, and has publicly demanded that Regev and Goldwasser be release unconditionally. The UN, Germany and Ital |
